Miniature tiled stove

by the Rörstrand factory

This little tiled stove is made of faïence with white and blue decoration, it stands on wooden feet and it is signed "29 October 1746 Rörstrand" in Stockholm.

Faïence is earthenware which has been fired, given an opaque, usually white, tin glaze and then decoratively painted. The technique was developed in Asia Minor, in Baghdad, to compete with the white Chinese porcelain which was being imported to Europe. We sometimes speak of majolica, which is the Italian name for the faïences which came from Majorca, and Delft, which is a tin-glazed stoneware with blue-and-white decoration, inspired by Chinese porcelain.

Delftware began to be made in Holland in the mid-17th century.The Rörstrand faïence and porcelain factory was founded in 1726 in Stockholm, near the castle of Rörstrand, to the north of the Karlberg Lake. The factory's earliest products were in fact blue-and-white ware, modelled on Delftware. After the mid-18th century, many of these products were composed by the architect and artist Jean Eric Rehn. On his travels in France in 1755 and 1756, he had come by a colour recipe and a large number of models, which he later developed. This made it possible for Rörstrand to use overglazed colours. The Rörstrand factory bought up its rival, the other Stockholm factory, Marieberg, in 1782 and closed it down six years later. During the 19th century, Rörstrand added feldspar, porcelain and bone china to its product range. Production was eventually transferred to Lidköping in Västergötland, where it remains to this day.